The media’s silence on the March for Life

posted at 5:25 pm on January 24, 2012 by Tina Korbe

My hopes for a Time magazine spread about the March for Life protesters are fading fast. For the fifth year in a row, The New York Times ignored the March for Life, which drew at least a hundred thousand participants in D.C. alone. NewsBusters reports:

For the fifth year in a row, there was no story in the Times print edition on the annual March for Life against abortion in Washington, D.C., which every year draws massive crowds in unpromising weather on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing abortion. …

As Times Watch reported last January, the 2011 print edition of the Times did not feature an actual news story of the thousands who marched in frigid weather, just two photos with the caption “Abortion Opponents Rally On the National Mall,” above a three-sentence description that led to a link to photographs online. That was actually a vast improvement; the Times in print absolutely ignored the March for Life in 2010, 2009, and 2008 (a 300-word story marked the 2007 March for Life on January 23 of that year).

The Times is far more eager to publicize protests in support of liberal causes, no matter how puny. When four protesters marched in support of the doomed Dream Act to grant amnesty to illegal immigrant students, the Times marked the occasion with a 780-word story.

Believe it or not, it gets worse. The NYT has a special standing feature on its blog, The Caucus, to document “Happenings in Washington” and not even that included a reference to the March. It did, however, mention that the N.H.L. Stanley Cup Champions, the Boston Bruins, would be honored by the president at the White House. Important stuff.

Meanwhile, about 50,000 people participated in the West Coast March for Life and, according to a tweet from Michelle Malkin, not even the local media turned out to cover it.

As a reminder to journalists who’ve forgotten, in general, the bigger the size and scope of the event, the more newsworthy it is. That means a protest of 100,000 is generally more newsworthy than a protest of 10.

As always, I’m less troubled by media bias than I am by the media pretense of objectivity. Even if “objectivity” refers more to “a unity of method … than aim,” as the authors of The Elements of Journalism suggest, the NYT clearly lacks it. A “unity of method” would require that reporters go about determining newsworthiness using the same standards every time. Unless one such standard at The Times is “Is this a liberal event?” then the NYT reporters clearly don’t reliably follow the same method in their selection of stories.

Then again, if NYT editors are willing to admit that the political ideology behind an event does partly determine the amount of coverage they give an event, then I’d be more willing to admit they’re objective in the sense of using a uniform method. ThinkProgress, for example, uniformly and reliably covers news of interest to a left-leaning readership — and ignores news that runs contrary to the political principles its editors espouse. That, in a way, is both more transparent and more objective than purporting to be a paper of national record that only haphazardly records events according to the whims of reporters and editors.

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As a reminder to journalists who’ve forgotten, in general, the bigger the size and scope of the event, the more newsworthy it is. That means a protest of 100,000 is generally more newsworthy than a protest of 10.

Note to organizers: Next year, provide free feces and urine for throwing.

How dare those EXTREMISTS protest against a women’s right to remove the products of conception from her uterus anytime she wants for any reason.
EXTREMISTS!!!! ///
*I was part of the March in 1997. The press ignored us then too*

The only the “mainstream” media covers an important event like this would be if all the men dressed like ladies and the ladies slicked their hair down and wore trousers and fake mustaches. Then it would be termed a “civil rights” march or something.

My hopes for a Time magazine spread about the March for Life protesters are fading fast. For the fifth year in a row, The New York Times ignored the March for Life, which drew at least a hundred thousand participants in D.C. alone.
===============================================

It doesn’t fit the Liberal template,er,agenda!!

An injustice that they won’t recongnize,or can’t in
there warped mindsets!!

ThinkProgress, for example, uniformly and reliably covers news of interest to a left-leaning readership — and ignores news that runs contrary to the political principles its editors espouse. That, in a way, is both more transparent and more objective than purporting to be a paper of national record that only haphazardly records events according to the whims of reporters and editors.

I don’t like American Idol. I have never seen an episode and don’t know any of the winners very well – beyond the very few who go on to real success. My point is, I don’t like AI so I don’t watch it or otherwise engage with it.
For people who claim to dislike the NY Times, you certainly read and pay attention to it a lot. It’s like eating food you don’t like out of spite. I don’t get it, and I don’t read the Times.

Believe it or not, it gets worse. The NYT has a special standing feature on its blog, The Caucus, to document “Happenings in Washington” and not even that included a reference to the March. It did, however, mention that the N.H.L. Stanley Cup Champions, the Boston Bruins, would be honored by the president at the White House. Important stuff.

Here’s one of my favorite quotes about these rallies from a radical pro-abortionist, NARAL president Nancy Keenan: “I just thought, my gosh, they are so young. There are so many of them, and they are so young.”

I think the parallel is apt. Liberals seem to have the same view about conservative’s money as they perceive conservatives having about their bodies. I’m not entirely sure why they so ardently demand reductions in economic freedom while they so detest apparent limitations in economic freedom.

Nope, Jesus only hates those evil Koch brothers for producing light, energy, food, and paper. Because, you know, they make lots of money from those activities, and Jesus was really a socialist. Or something.

If Kirk is incapacitated enough to resign Quinn will appoint a placeholder(D of course) until the general or special election.
The only reason Kirk won was because he was running against the Mob’s banker.

First off, there were no molatov cocktails, no ‘youths’ with their faces covered by bandanas, no shaking of angry fists, no pipe bombs, no defecating on police cars and- most telling- there were no arrests.

If these people want to get the media to pay attention, they need to make a mess. Stop cleaning up after themselves, get loud (PRAYING in front of the Supreme Court? Really, lifers? You should be YELLING in front of the Supreme Court.) and get destructive.

Also, it helps if you get Nancy Pelosi and our beloved Dear President to give you a positive soundbite. That’s always good.

Reporting on peaceful, pro-life demonstrators doesn’t advance their narrative, so they don’t care about it. I’m only surprised that they didn’t report that 100,000 intolerant religious nuts marched on DC because they all want women to die on the floor and our daughters’ dreams destroyed.

I took a look at the photos knowing what I’d see from our side (pro-life) and, yup, thousands and thousands stretching as far as I could see down the street. Several pictures later, all 10-15 of the “pro-choice” pickets, photographed upward so it would look like a bigger crowd.

Also, didn’t you just love the juxtaposition of pictures before and after the pro-life (not referencing Chelsie, although that one looked more pro-life!), especially the saving of the pigmy elephant, etc. yet no concern on the part of the NYTs for saving pre-born children.

Following in this theme, the National Citizens Coalition of Canada is collecting e-signatures for a petition to stop funding the CBC (Continuously Biased Commentary) with taxpayer dollars – in the USA, think NPR on super steroids. The site is http://www.cbcoptout.ca/

The news should be paying much less attention to protest in general unless they affect elections.

As much as I dislike the pro-life movement, I must admit that have tended to be polite since the era of abortion doctor shootings. This shows more learning and restraint than do the various leftist protests like Occupy.

We all know the agendas of the left wing, main stream media but it is nevertheless disturbing to witness their blatant avoidance and rejection of all causes not consistent with their Marxist, hedonistic political preferences.

Since I support the death penalty I’m not ‘pro-life’-I’m anti-abortion…and how could have a problem with people out marching against the murder of the pre-born?
That’s what an abortion is: The MURDER of an unborn child.

yeah I did a search last night like ‘march for life abc’ etc. to see who reported, it was only local affiliates who covered for the networks.

This is honestly the biggest piece of physical evidence, with clear point/counterpoint, for the ‘MSM is liberal bias’ meme. You can’t cover 50 douchebags in a park who are anti-American, doing drugs, stabbing, shooting, sexual assaulting…and then not cover 100k persons. Next time it’s not March for Life, it’s Occupy the Mall, or Occupy the Womb…Occupy Life?

Again, it’s the states that give in to the courts, yet still have the ability to make and enforce laws, and ignore the tribunal.

If Kirk is incapacitated enough to resign Quinn will appoint a placeholder(D of course) until the general or special election.
The only reason Kirk won was because he was running against the Mob’s banker.

annoyinglittletwerp on January 24, 2012 at 6:05 PM

annoyinglittletwerp:Good points,I just hope he recovers to
his normalcy!:)

The only solace here is that folks nowadays are getting less and less of their information from the mainstream media. The NY Times stopped being relevant a decade ago. All it gets from me is a passing glance at the front cover while waiting on line at Starbucks. Then, when I get close enough, I piss of liberals by pulling a copy of the Wall Street Journal from the bottom rack (of a four rack newspaper holder) and I place it on top of the “Times”….oh yeah, stickin’ it to da’ man!!!

Tina, thanks for covering the March for Life….you did your job as a journalist. One can only hope the rest of the “establishment” will wake up some day….

The NYT can manage to get one of their reporters embedded with a squad of Taliban in Afghanistan, but it can’t send a person down to take a few notes on a march happening in their own city.

It isn’t that the NYT can’t, it’s that they can’t be bothered covering an event counter to its agenda and simply refuse to cover, especially if it is peaceful with well mannered and well bathed clean mouthed participants that tend not to spew trash and bodily fluids.

Um, when you have the same, predictable, event for 39 years, it’s not national news.

Note that the hated Washington Post covered the March on the front page of it’s Metro section, giving it better coverage than the reliably conservative Washington Examiner, which buried it randomly inside the paper.

Well lets see here, we have 100 thousand plus people peacefully protesting the ability of others to commit open murder on the most defenseless members on society: unborn children. The pro life protesters were clean, peaceful, knew what they were protesting, did their protest and then went back home to their jobs and families, but that does not serve the liberal agenda so it gets ignored. Now if we had about 50 useless idiot protesters or so who: have no clue why they are there, who were poop on cop cars and urinating in the streets, rape woman, openly selling and using drugs, vandalizing property, refusing to leave the area and sleeping in their own filth, demanding the government give them free money and other freebies including paying off their student loans, calling for socialism in America while waving flags with photos of mass murdering socialist thugs on them, the liberal media will be would be there in mass and be calling it a huge peaceful protest that all Americans must embrace. Media bias noooooooo why would anyone think that.

As always, I’m less troubled by media bias than I am by the media pretense of objectivity.

^

Reminds me of a conversation I once had with a liberal. A particularly annoying one. I pointed out that the majority of mainstream news outlets are liberal propaganda. Rather than argue with that point, she just claimed that the conservative propaganda from Fox News contained more bias than all the leftist news sources combined. I laughed and said that I didn’t mind the “bias” part of liberal bias, but rather the “liberal” part of it.

The Grey Lady, the “paper of record”…. and the most in your face example of an extremely leftwing press who distort, omit the truth when it contradicts their views, and generally pick their stories and narrative them to put the best propaganda sheen on their brand of progressive politics.. They have the most dishonest columnists, and the lamest (please wike me Mr. wiberal sir) boot licking faux conservatives they can find. It’s not that they are liberal in the extreme..

It’s that they lie about it..

and they lie about the conservative America they so enjoy ridiculing. They distort our views, misquote, and throw context out the window, they show more respect for the views of the Taliban fighting our troops,.. (a huge number of whom, are from that same conservative family America), than they do social conservatives,… They spit on national security when a republican serves as President, yet roll over and play dead when Valarie Jarret barks at them to lay off something. They aided and abetted every leftwing protest, while ignoring any conservative ones, and have spent 3 years painting the Tea Party as extremists nutjobs… potentially violent, devisive and dangerous…

Yet the hundreds plus actual violent crimes of the much adored by them occupy crowd, earns love pats and sympathetic editorials from those same guardians of the public narrative.

The right is always hatefilled, racist, and fear mongering,..

The left is always full of hope, peace, love, and good intentions for the public good, even when they are raping women they dragged into tents at an occupy protests, defacing public property or putting police officers in the hospital.. They love the revolutionary chic of the Che’ of the moment, always sypathize with our foreign enemies (When an R is in the White House), always impugn the patriotism of the right, the courage, the honor and integrity,.. we have no heroes, no giants.. they won’t allow that..

But a pretty boy president with a thousand days and no accomplishments besides a near miss with nuclear war, is martyred, suddenly he’s right besides Washington and Lincoln? Reagan was the only president to survive a gunshot wound, and they still sneer and smirk when they mention him, except when trying to steal his mantel and popularity to wrap around Obama.

They have led the national media’s coverage by the subjects they have chosen, and like lemmings, the media follow their lead. The Country is so divided, so outraged, and after ginning up that division, they attempt to blame it on Sarah, or Newt, or who ever speaks on the right.

We’ve been getting sh*t on for decades, and some thin k we should just ignore it, and move on?

–

We’ve been doing that, and it’s gotten us nothing but more propaganda heaped on us, more distortion, more lies…

Enough, capital friggin E NOUGH..

If as deeply flawed as he is, Newt will drop kick Brian Williams nutz over the backfield fence, then he’s going to get the prize. Mitt wantz some of that, then try attacking the media bias, the media Obama spin machine for once rather than the conservatives who don’t like his limp appeal.

We want bared teeth, we want snarls, we want the media to finally without the damned mask address why they lie so routinely about half the country..

a long rant, I’m sorry for that.. but I’ve had that inside my chest since Reagan’s first term, the media only got worse, they barely even care that even the middle sees it now, another Obama turn, they’ll admit it openly..

lol, You are so full of shite, I’m sure your eyes must be brown. Hot Air runs any number of articles promoting positive reports of Obama’s polls, acheivements, Krugman crap, you name it.

You freaking find anything comparable on DKOS or HuffPo and show us. And you are free to post any of your clap-trap BS liberal musings here unfettered. I’ve had an account at HuffPo for years and never once got a comment past moderation.

The New York Times ignored the March for Life, which drew at least a hundred thousand participants in D.C. alone.

If anyone was thinking that the bias in the media was only a benign, natural result of the aggregate personal bias of journalists, this should push them across the line. Our media isn’t manifesting an observer’s error; it is corrupt.

@AP — You point out that it is silly (my word) to blame the media for reporting something true that we would prefer not to hear, but when the person telling you the gossip is telling you because they know it will make you angry, it’s hard not to be as angry at them as the news itself. We’re being screwed with, and we know it.

Thanks Tina! Every year I wonder what the media coverage of the march will be like. Unfortunately, last year Hot Air’s coverage was about the same as everyone else. I’m pleased to see you are changing that.

To fight this you need to stop purchasing/using/quoting the mainstream media. They are dying but slowly. We cancelled our local paper which has been getting smaller and smaller (like many others). It will never disappear but its influence is definitely waning. The NYT stock price reflects its decline. Evening news too is losing ground to the internet. Within ten years I expect none of the mainstream media will be anything other than one other internet site that liberals click on to hear their view of the world repeated. Short those media stocks and any green stocks and you can be pretty confident of a good return.

The New York Times weekday circulation is 1.2 million. During Primetime, Fox News reaches 2.3 million viewers. Guess what? Fox News IS the mainstream media. Get over it, Tina. Your whiny victimhood is disingenuous, divisive, and disgusting.

As Dr. Groseclose of UCLA wrote about in his book, the propaganda in the media is not what they say, but what they DON’T say. And this story is a perfect example – especially since a majority of Americans now oppose abortion.